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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Asimov I've read so far!, October 29, 2001
This review is from: Currents of Space (Mass Market Paperback)
I just finished this book a couple nights ago. I've also read all four Robot novels and the first Empire book Stars Like Dust. I have to say that out of those books, The Currents of Space drew me in the most and really delivered! The Trantorian Empire is rapidly approaching its full conquest of the galaxy. However, the wealthy planet Sark is one of the relatively few major obstacles remaining to the Trantorians in their mission. Sark is independent and important to the galaxy for its sale of the extremely valuable substance known as kyrt. Kyrt is similar in some ways to cotton but vastly superior in other respects, and it's only available from Sark. However, Sark doesn't produce the kyrt itself. For some unknown reason, kyrt grows *only* on the nearby planet of Florina. Sark basically uses the Florinian natives as cheap slave labor to harvest and process the kyrt. No one has been able to get kyrt to grow elsewhere as anything but plain cotton. Thus, Sark has become wealthy and powerful. In addition, though Trantor could easily subdue Sark militarily, it would face the wrath of the rest of the galaxy for disrupting the supply of kyrt. Naturally, Sark depends entirely on its exploitation of Florina for its wealth. Now enter a man who knows that Florina is doomed and that the immensely important kyrt production may be in jeopardy. This leads to a fantastic tale of political intrigue, murder, and sci-fi that somehow seems to have a lot more substance than the 200 pages it takes up. Read it! If you can get it, that is. All three Empire novels are out of print. I suggest trying online auctions or used book stores.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Of The Galactic Empire Novels, January 1, 2007
After finishing "The Stars, Like Dust", Asimov started working on a third novel which would be called "The Currents of Space", which he was intending to publish in "Astounding". After discussing the idea with Walter Bradbury of Doubleday & Co., Bradbury expressed interest in publishing the third novel as he had the first two. The novel was published in October - December of 1952 in "Astounding", and by Doubleday in December.
"The Currents of Space" is easily the best of the three precursor novels to the Foundation series which have become known as the Galactic Empire Series; however that is not all that difficult. This story takes place in Asimov's universe chronologically between the other two books, at a time when Trantor had become an empire, but not the Galactic Empire that it would become later.
The story is centered on the planet Florina and on a man named Rik, who initially appears to be mentally challenged, but who is in fact a spatio-analyst from Earth who has had much of his mind erased by a Psychic Probe after he tried to warn of the impending destruction of the planet. When Rik's memory starts to return, people from Trantor and Sark (the world which rules Florina), and perhaps others as well become aware of his existence and try to find and control him.
As with the first two Galactic Empire novels, Asimov wrote an afterword where he explains the scientific errors in the story. In this story the error is rather significant to the plot; however, the other elements of this story do not suffer as badly as they did in "Pebble in The Sky" or "The Stars, Like Dust". Regardless, this is only a fairly average novel, and not the best place to start if you are unfamiliar with Isaac Asimov.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely one of Asimov's best, July 26, 1999
This is certainly the best of the three Empire novels, and one of Asimov's best science fiction novels of any type. I love his early fiction in general more than his later stuff, like FOundation and Earth and Robots and Empire and Nemesis. In comparison, Currents is much tighter, and more cleanly written, with a plot that GRIPS you like a good mystery(which, I think, is the type of writer Asimov was at heart). My one regret about this novel is that it is one of the last of his that I have to read, and I don't want to be left without any more. And if there was one thing I was left wanting in the book, it was for a certain kiss(not to give away anything) to develop into something more-- but I suppose that is the working of modern hack-fiction on me, and Asimov's abstinence from such cheap "attention-catchers" demonstrates his superior writing ability. He didn't NEED that to make the book more interesting.
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